military articles?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Before I start, I’m not trying to bring anything on to this forum that doesn’t belong. It does, but it’s sort of a squeeze. Now for the questions:

  1. Have there been any articles on military vehicles or operations on a railroad layout?

  2. Have there been any articles on building (or scratchbuilding) any military objects for a layout?

  3. While searching for an article in the index database, I came across an article from a 1930’s issue of RMC about scratchbuilding a coastal defence gun, but I lost the page ti was on. Can anyone help me find the month and year, and/or a copy of that magazine for sale?

I ask these questions so I can (hopefully) start work on a WWII era model railroad layout, but I had no clue about how to start, other than to ask questions for articles to look at.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

2

John Gowland made the inital large donation to the Boothbay Railway Village that started the Model Railroad Group at the museum. His model railroad, The Eastern Front RR, modeled the Germany during their push into Russia in 1944 and 1945. It was about 400 square feet and had many buildings, about 150 period prototype locomotives and rail cars and hundreds of military vehicles. The layout was dismantled around 1995. The following link has a few pictures of the layout.

http://www.railwayvillage.org/Eastern_Front_RR.htm

3

There was an article on modeling World War II a few years back. It wasn’t very detailed, but it dealt with troop sleepers and troop trains.

A back issue of Model Railroad Planning had a layout plan featuring wartime operations at an East coast port.

There have been articles with drawings about the Pullman troop sleepers and kitchen cars.

If you are interested in railroad operations in direct support of military operations (e.g., the operations of military rail units in the war zones), I can’t say I remember seeing any articles about modeling them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen articles about railroad operations on military bases, either. (I think historical articles have appeared in Trains and Classic Trains, but these were not aimed at the modeler.)

4

Would the book Narrow Gauge to No Mans Land by Richard Dunn help you any?

It is WW1.

Ralph H

5

take a look at this

http://www.archive.org/details/TroopTra1943

6

Ralph, I believe that book deals with trench railroads, which were either 2 foot or 600 mm gauge, depending on who was running them. A lot of fascinating equipment, but of very limited value to anyone not modeling the front lines of WWI.

Except for the troop sleepers and troop kitchens, most military transportation in the US during WWII was handled in (or on) standard cars. I’ve seen photos of entire trainloads of spotless tanks chained down on ordinary flat cars. Smaller items moved in box cars, or in crates on flat cars. A lot of military cargo (pipe, lumber, sections of Quonset huts, Marston Mat…) was not much different in appearance or handling from similar products intended for the civilian market.

More sensitive items in open-top cars were covered with tarpaulins, often without any markings of any kind.

Even today, military vehicles being shipped by rail are simply chained to very ordinary looking cars, with DODX reporting marks instead of TTX or TTAX. Ordnance travels in placarded box cars.

Chuck (Retired MSgt modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)